Arian Foster’s success grows from deep San Diego roots

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It required a circuitous route through Knoxville, Tenn., then Houston, but Arian Foster finally will dig his cleats into the turf at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium on Monday night.

“It’s my first time. I’m excited,” said Foster, who had a huge senior season at Mission Bay High School before getting a scholarship to the University of Tennessee.

Foster’s Mission Bay Buccaneers lost in the semifinal round a decade ago, and only the San Diego city championship game was played at the home of the Chargers. But Foster starts for the Texans there Monday night in the 2013 season opener.

He was never a Chargers fan as a teen, rooting for the Raiders instead. But he maintains strong ties to the town, having arrived before his junior year to live with father, Carl, a former University of New Mexico receiver, to try to find direction. He had left Albuquerque, N.M., where he was born and living with his mother Bernadette — and where trouble was starting to find him.

Seeking discipline

“There comes a point in time when a son needs to be with his father, and my dad was in San Diego — (call it) manifest destiny,” Foster, 27, said. “I think San Diego showed me that there was another way out. There were a lot of opportunities out there for you if you just handled your business correctly. I met a lot of good people that I still stay in contact with to this day, people that I call my brothers. I’m still very close with the counselor who was there at the time. We stay in touch. It changed my life for the better coming to San Diego.”

A prescient coach, Desi Herrera, moved Foster from linebacker to tailback at the end of his junior year, and Foster found his calling, running wild as a senior — on the field, not on the town. He finished with 2,093 rushing yards — 321 in a single game — and scored 30 touchdowns, six on kickoff returns. Out of nowhere he had become the latest in a remarkable line of running backs who grew up in the San Diego area. Marcus Allen, Terrell Davis, Ricky Williams and Reggie Bush called the city home.

Mission Bay ties

In a ceremony that touched Foster last fall, Mission Bay High School retired his No. 2.

“I had two (coaches) I was really close with,” Foster said. “One was coach (Dennis) Pugh. Good ol’ coach Pugh, man, he’s a character. He’s just a good dude who just really wants to see all of his players go to the next level, and he did everything he could to do so. The next one was Desi Herrera, my coach when I was a junior. He was the main one that wanted to see me at running back, and he’s the one that switched me from me being third string to first string. He took a lot of flak for it because there were two seniors ahead of me, but he was like, ‘I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do.’ I (still) owe him one.”

Now, as a former NFL rushing champion, Foster gets his night under the lights at Qualcomm.